This closet was similar to (but slightly smaller than) the closet in the guest bedroom. (There is actually no closet in our bedroom.) Someone had nailed up shelves to make better use of the space, but they also left the door up.

I’ve mentioned how small our bathroom is. I may not have mentioned that there was not initially a fan / vent in the bathroom.

Yeah.

So we took off the door, put in an exhaust fan, but it was still… ugly.

I knew that I wanted a better use of space than we initially had in the closet, and I really wanted something that was not tremendously ugly. But I wasn’t quite sure I had the skills to do this. So after tearing everything apart, I took a brief break and built a bookshelf.

Once I completed that project I had more tools AND a far better comfort with the project.

I didn’t have to replace any drywall in the closet, but I did have a fair amount of patching to do, and slapped on a LOT of primer. I also didn’t remove the interior door trim, so… don’t try to go into the closet and look at the doorway, okay?

First thing I did was determine how much big I needed the top shelf to be, to pull bins easily in and out. Then, I put in the stop shelf. It’s got supports on the side, because initially much of the weight was going to rest upon that top shelf.

Why did I need the extra support? Because I wanted a tall space along the side, for brooms and such.

I decided that I wasn’t sure enough of my skills to trust most of the weight of the lower shelves onto the top shelf, so I ran a stud up the back of the closet, into which I’d the right shelf support.

Ignore the random boards I shoved into the closet, because I had nowhere else to put them. I now had somewhere on both sides to attach the shelves.

I used the pocket jig to put screw holes in the bottom of the shelves at where the studs were (or were supposed to be anyway). The right side was easier, since I was screwing into wood.

Here’s the next shelf! And yes it is, in fact, deeper than the top shelf. I determined that I could put the top shelf up higher if I had more clearance. But the lower shelves could be deeper, since they didn’t have the be maneuvered out.

I measured the crap out of everything, and found some heavy felt bins in dark blue that would work perfectly–I actually spaced the shelves to fit the bins I ordered.

I left the bottom shelf off because I was not going to try to pull the linoleum up with only 12 or so inches of clearance.

I was initially going to leave the shelves natural colored, since I used pine boards, but for a different project I found white stain (Marshmallow!) and a (mostly) clear polyurethane, and decided that would lighten the space up even more, and I ended up being quite pleased with how it turned out.

And that’s how it looks! I was extra delighted with the closet because aside from cutting the boards, I did all the work myself, and it was EXTREMELY SATISFYING.

I actually still have an empty bin, which is AWESOME since as I noted, space is at a premium in this house.